What Color Helmet? Reforming Security Council Peacekeeping Mandates

Abstract

Abstract : This study is divided into five chapters. The first focuses on the legal framework for peacekeeping and enforcement operations under the United Nations Charter and the North Atlantic Treaty. The general approach here is an article-by-article review of the pertinent texts, without delving into nuances of meaning or legislative history. As will be shown, much of the confusion over current peacekeeping practice lies in inadequately considered departures from what States actually agreed to do in the United Nations and Nato. Chapter II is a brief summary of the forty peacekeeping operations in which the United Nations engaged from June 1948 through the end of 1995. Again, to foster a reform-minded policy outlook, only a skeletal description of the mandate for each UN peacekeeping operation is given. Marshaling such an outline of peacekeeping operations is instructive in that even the bare recitation of this fifty years of practice reveals a remarkable range of experiences. It is easy to discern why Security Council mandates on peacekeeping lack consistency. Chapter III of this study contains an analysis of UN peacekeeping practice and of key points that ought to be dealt with in reformulating traditional peacekeeping and enforcement actions under Security Council mandates. In Chapter IV, several scenarios are presented to illustrate how properly mandated peacekeeping and enforcement operations might work in the post-Cold War era. To emphasize the critical distinctions between different use of force mandates and the corresponding legal status of the individuals involved, the illustrations refer to white, blue, and green helmet participants. Chapter V of this study proposes a few suggestions to improve Security Council mandates for mixed traditional peacekeeping and enforcement actions.